Chapter 74 #4
Icecaller flinches back into familiar arms. The wreck of her father jerks away from her as her tattoos flare, then closes in, purring, gurgling soft and hungry things.
Behind her, a man dies screaming as his sister chews her way through his stomach.
He’s filled from the roiling air and rises again to hunt his wife with a crazed, loose grin.
In front of Icecaller, the arm holding the shattered spear scrabbles, pulling a blood-slick body from under a mound of muttering corpses.
It takes a moment for her to recognise Hawkspit.
He opens his mouth to speak, but she can already see his geometrics glowing fiercely on his skin.
Intact. She grabs, his wrist and screams. ‘Run. The sleeping halls!’
So they run. The loping meat of her father pursues them, sniffing at the edges of their protection, cursing them between smashed teeth.
There’s a grief building inside her like a stopped river, but she’s choked it up with terror.
No time to feel. No time to stop. No time for anything other than the mad, aching drum of her feet on stone.
Down and down. The halls are in chaos. She glances about wildly for Skinpainter, Shipwright, Quickfish, but if they’re there, she can’t see them.
Always in the front of her head like a pulse is her sister – Nigh, Nigh, Nigh.
As they run, her feet draw her towards the sound of singing.
The Deadsingers. She’ll have to pass the council chamber to get to the sleeping halls.
Of course. Perhaps they can help her. Perhaps they can save her father.
She sprints faster still, throwing herself towards the arch of the chamber with a yell of exertion, Hawkspit’s feet skidding bloodily.
His hands pressed to his temples, his mouth a litany of terror and prayer.
Her breath is a dagger in her side, the air slipping from her with every minute.
As Icecaller collapses against the cool stone of the arch, she sees them.
The Deadsingers, driven on to the high speaking stones, back-to-back.
Beneath them, a sea of ridden people; herbwives, soldiers, bartenders, all clutching spears and knives and broken things, their bodies bloodied, darkened and torn with the stain of the dead.
The Deadsingers chant resolutely in low harmonised tones.
A man leaps for them, and is struck open-handed by the rightmost twin, her hair whipping behind her.
He staggers, dazed. His broken tattoos flare and the Deadsingers drag him behind them.
It’s only then that Icecaller sees the cleft in the rock at their back, and in it, the children.
Another ridden woman leaps and the Deadsingers catch her mid-air, singing into her screaming, bloody mouth.
She quiets, and they send her scrambling into the cleft to join the others.
Icecaller turns towards them, skirting the milling mass, pushing them back with the flat of her blade, keeping Hawkspit in front of her, between her arms. The closer she gets to the song of the Singers, the more the ridden dead shrink back.
But not her father. His roar is close behind her, thundering across the flat circle of the council chamber, scattering bodies in his wake.
The Deadsingers see her, see Kinghammer a hairsbreadth behind. Their lips set in a thin line.
‘Help him,’ she screams.
The leftmost Singer ducks a blade, slaps its wielder between the eyes as he barrels past, and shakes her head at Icecaller, horror cold on her face.
The thing that was Kinghammer laughs, his voice guttural and huge at her back. ‘There’s too many of us, dearest daughter.’
The rightmost Deadsinger leans back from a thrust chair leg, nods.
Icecaller scrambles up the steps towards them, kicking at grasping hands, hauling Hawkspit’s yelping, bruised body behind her. ‘Please!’
Something softens in their gaze and a lidded glance passing between them. The twins take Icecaller by her wrists and raise her onto the ledge. They’re surprisingly strong, their skin like soft wood, stark with muscle underneath.
She staggers gratefully behind them, Hawkspit flailing after. He shoots her a look and rubs at his shoulder.
The thing inside Kinghammer wastes no time, vaulting out from the mass of the dead, and landing on the ledge in front of them.
Unsteady for the briefest moment, its new body and ruined legs conspiring against it.
The Deadsingers move quickly, sliding either side of Kinghammer.
It screams in rage, flailing the hammer in an arc.
They dip like herons striking, as their song hits it from both sides like a vice.
Their harmony and resonance shivers through the cavern.
Icecaller can feel it against her eyes like a thumb against her veins.
Hawkspit falls back screaming, hands over his ears.
In the face of the song, the dead are driven back like leaves on a pond.
Kinghammer falls to his knees. A jolt of hope strikes her heart, and before she thinks Icecaller runs to him.
The Deadsingers glance at her in horror, raise warning hands. Too late.
Kinghammer meets her eyes. Her father meets her eyes.
‘I love you, Ice,’ he says.
As she holds his gaze, she watches the wights of the Empire eat his soul between one heartbeat and next. The monster that fills his body blinks, looks at her with the eyes of the hungry dead, and pulls her close.
Icecaller feels a sharp pain in her stomach, and watches her father’s hand withdraw, red and dripping.
She has a moment to take it in. The broken tattoo, the Deadsingers recoiling.
One of them is bodily dragging a shrieking Hawkspit with them, retreating into the cleft just ahead of the yowling teeth of the mob.
The first of the dead hits her like a punch, just above the kidney.
She feels it lodge and settle, spreading like fever.
Devouring. Her blood sings. She’s hungry.
And angry. Furious. Her arms take a better grip on her shield.
Lifts her spear. Absently, she watches her father’s body disappear into the depths, at the head of a howling mob, moving as if hunting.
Stalking something down into the depths of the mountain.
He can wait. She has to find her sister.
They all have to find her sister. A snarl tears its way down her spine as she throws herself into the mass of her brothers and sisters, and begins to run with them.
She is pulled down through the Stump by a hundred eager hands.
Her head sings with voices. They chase the sound of steel and screams. Bodies tumble into her path.
She stabs, tears. Blood spatters her teeth.
She laughs, her tongue hot with the fire of other tongues.
Distantly, the mountain thunders. The stone shudders.
Rocks fall in great heavy fists. One catches her shoulder, breaks the bone.
Her arm ripples with shapes, mouths, eyes that stretch.
Her tattoos burn like a banked fire. Voices ahead.
Her mind lurches towards them. Close, so close.
Panic in the tones, pitched and shouting.
She pushes herself over obstacles. Splintered, charred, bladed and bent.
A man reels towards her. She catches his stomach with the point of her spear, reaches into his screaming mouth and tears his cheek off.
It slithers wetly down her fingers, which convulse with joy.
She runs them over the broad oak side of a door, smiles at the red they leave.
A circle of pale faces swims in front of her, guarding a knot of children, all blades and bravado.
A bearded boy with an axe, his free arm stretched defensively over the chest of the man next to him, a scream peeling off his lips.
Icecaller swallows meat. Circles. Her spear moves light and lazily in the looped light, as her new brothers and sisters gather behind her.
The small defensive circle hold their arms outstretched, placatory, mouthing something that swims slow through the thundering blood in her head, and is lost in the red of her thoughts.
Icecaller knows them all. Quick, Roof, Steel.
In her way. All of them, in her fuckin’ way.
Behind them, small and tousled, scratched legs and scuffed feet, Nigh. Her head howls with relief. Icecaller howls with it. Her sister. Her sister. Her beautiful, treacherous, delicious sister.
Her legs lope closer. The circle in front of her contracts.
Words fly past her in a gabble. The mountain shudders and booms. The air stinks of acid.
Icecaller’s arms loosen and she charges.
And if her tongue runs with other voices, does it matter?
The hunger is hers. That buzzsaw, biting hunger.
Then, she catches a flicker of movement.
The beard and the axe from the left, a drawn blade from Steel on the right.
Icecaller’s shield snaps out, hooks the axe edge, lets it bite. She tugs, pulls out and up, drags it free from Roofkeeper’s startled hands. Twists, and snaps his arm below the elbow. Laughs. No one fiercer than the Kinghammer’s daughter.
Quickfish yells in fury and throws himself at her. She doesn’t expect it. Barely sees it coming. Feels his forehead crash into her face. Cartilage pops. The bridge and bone of her nose a smashed ruin. The voices in her blood exult.
She turns the spear, punches closed fist with the haft. Into the throat, once, twice, three times. Feels his windpipe collapse. Spits blood into his gasping face. Shrieks likes an eagle. No one faster than the Emperor’s daughter.
She’s still howling as Steelfinder’s sword takes her in the side, low and subtle under her shield, slipping in like a lover.
The blood around it floats, billows, grows the ghosts of teeth and eyes and hands.
Icecaller turns on the point of the blade to face Steel.
And if she’s weeping, they’re not her tears.
But the hunger is, that black wolf hunger.
The blade hits her again, above the first red mouth.
Her spear is held too wide, her shield heavy from Roofkeeper’s axe.
She lets them fall. Behind the blade, Steelfinder’s face, tear-stained and wracked with grief.
Icecaller feels something slip inside her.
For a moment Nigh’s screaming and she’s terrified for her baby sister.
She wants to pick up her up. To take her.
To take her apart. Piece by piece by red little piece.
And if she’s praying, they’re not her prayers. But the hunger is, that fat wasp hunger. It fills her head as Steel says something to her, and leans in to push her off the blade. Icecaller sees her moment, and strikes.
The voices rejoice as she pulls Steel into her.
Sliding along the blade like a tongue. Taking it deep.
Hauling Steelfinder off balance, until her throat tilts against Icecaller’s teeth.
Until Icecaller’s mouth closes on muscle as her hand pushes Steelfinder’s chin up and away.
Bites down to blood, hot, sweet and flowing.
She swallows and bites again. No one sharper than the Emperor’s hunger.
Steelfinder’s body falls. Icecaller lets it slip in gobbets from her lips.
The flesh hangs red and wet. She smiles through it.
Crouching, she beckons her sister with a hundred hungry fingers.
Then from behind her, curses. Shouts of pain and rage from her new siblings.
A trio reel into the room in a mess of fighting bodies.
A wrapped fist rising and falling, something brass and screaming between the fingers.
Sigils blazing with sulphur and saltpetre.
And rags and ribbons, red, and yellow and red again.
Shipwright. Shroudweaver. Skinpainter.
Icecaller’s brothers and sisters surround them, fighting with blade, tooth and nail for the Empire.
Shroudweaver batters them back with concussive force, a slight man, his right hand wrapped in red, sulphur stink following him like a plague.
Behind Shroudweaver, a woman like the prow of a ship.
Shipwright, who moves like a wolf, a hammer, a coursing stag.
Stringing the two, like a ragged flag, Skinpainter, their eyes wild, skin running with black and red ink. The crowd in front of them roils.
Limbs buffet her, knocking her off balance. While she’s distracted, Roofkeeper falls back with Steelfinder’s body. Icecaller’s sister vanishes in the press, and she howls in rage, staggering as the room brightens around her.
Gold light. Gold light on the brows of her brothers and sisters.
Their voices falling silent, red threads wrapped around them.
She turns to fight with the anger of a thousand bodies, but there’s a pressure on her skull and a twining in her heart.
A firm hand grips her blade. A fist smashes her jaw.
As the light fails, the last thing she feels is a wash of searing heat and a voice like bellows-brass.